First systematic analysis of its kind even proposes reasons for the negative correlation.

More than 400 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Greek playwright Euripides wrote in his play Bellerophon, “Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.”

Euripides was not an atheist and only used the word “fool” to provoke his audience. But, if you look at the studies conducted over the past century, you will find that those with religious beliefs will, on the whole, score lower on tests of intelligence. That is the conclusion of psychologists Miron Zuckerman and Jordan Silberman of the University of Rochester and Judith Hall of Northeastern University who have published a meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review.

This is the first systematic meta-analysis of 63 studies conducted between 1928 and 2012. In such an analysis, the authors look at each study’s sample size, quality of data collection, and analysis methods and then account for biases that may have inadvertently crept into the work. This data is next refracted through the prism of statistical theory to draw an overarching conclusion of what scholars in this field find. “Our conclusion,” as Zuckerman puts it, “is not new.”

“If you count the number of studies which find a positive correlation against those that find a negative correlation, you can draw the same conclusion because most studies find a negative correlation,” added Zuckerman. But that conclusion would be qualitative, because the studies’ methods vary. “What we have done is to draw that conclusion more accurately through statistical analysis.”

Setting the boundaries

Out of 63 studies, 53 showed a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity, while 10 showed a positive one. Significant negative correlations were seen in 35 studies, whereas only two studies showed significant positive correlations.

The three psychologists have defined intelligence as the “ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” In short this is analytic intelligence, not the newly identified forms of creative and emotional intelligence, which are still subjects of dispute. In the various studies being examined, analytic intelligence has been measured in many different ways, including GPA (grade point average), UEE (university entrance exams), Mensa membership, and Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, among others.

Religiosity is defined as involvement in some (or all) facets of religion, which includes belief in the supernatural, offering gifts to this supernatural, and performing rituals affirming their beliefs. Other signs of religiosity were measured using surveys, church attendance, and membership in religious organizations.

Among the thousands of people involved in these studies, the authors found that gender or education made no difference to the correlation between religiosity and intelligence; however, age mattered. The negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence was found to be the weakest among the pre-college population. That may be because of the uniqueness of the college experience, where most teenagers leave home for the first time, get exposed to new ideas, and are given a higher degree of freedom to act on them. Instead, in pre-college years, religious beliefs may largely reflect those of the family.

The gifted, the atheists

Is there a chance that higher intelligence makes people less religious? Two sets of large-scale studies tried to answer this question.

The first are based on the Terman cohort of the gifted, started in 1921 by Lewis Terman, a psychologist at Stanford University. (The cohort is still being followed.) In the study, Terman recruited more than 1,500 children whose IQ exceeded 135 at the age of 10. Two studies used this data, one conducted by Robin Sears at Columbia University in 1995 and the other by Michael McCullough at the University of Miami in 2005, and they found that “Termites,” as the gifted are called, were less religious when compared to the general public.

What makes these results remarkable is not just that these gifted folks were less religious, something that is seen among elite scientists as well, but that 60 percent of the Termites reported receiving “very strict” or “considerable” religious training while 33 percent received little training. Thus, almost all of the gifted Termites grew up to be less religious.

The second set of studies is based on students of New York’s Hunter College Elementary School for the intellectually gifted. This school selects its students based on a test given at a young age. To study their religiosity, graduates of this school were queried when they were between the ages of 38 and 50. They all had IQs that exceeded 140, and the study found that only 16 percent of them derived personal satisfaction from religion (about the same number as the Termites).

So while the Hunter study did not control for factors such as socioeconomic status or occupation, it did find that high intelligence at a young age preceded lower belief in religion many years later.

Other studies on the topic have been ambiguous. A 2009 study, led by Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, compared religious beliefs and average national IQs of 137 countries. In their sample, only 23 countries had more than 20 percent atheists, which constituted, according to Lynn, "virtually all higher IQ countries." The positive correlation between intelligence and atheism was a strong one, but the study came under criticism from Gordon Lynch of Birkbeck College, because it did not account for complex social, economical, and historical factors.

Enlarge/ The relationship between countries' belief in a god and national average IQ.

It’s the beliefs, stupid

Overall, Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall conclude that, according to their meta-analysis, there is little doubt a significant negative correlation exists (i.e. people who are more religious score worse on varying measures of intelligence). The correlation is more negative when religiosity measures beliefs rather than behavior. That may be because religious behavior may be used to help someone appear to be part of a group even though they may not believe in the supernatural.

So why do more intelligent people appear to be less religious? There are three possible explanations. One possibility is that more intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. A 1992 meta-analysis of seven studies found that intelligent people may be more likely to become atheists when they live in religious societies, because intelligent people tend to be nonconformists.

The most common explanation is that intelligent people don’t like to accept any beliefs that are not subject to empirical tests or logical reasoning. Zuckerman writes in the review that intelligent people may think more analytically, which is “controlled, systematic, and slow”, as opposed to intuitively, which is “heuristic-based, mostly non-conscious, and fast." That analytical thinking leads to lower religiosity.

The final explanation is that intelligence provides whatever functions religion does for believers. There are four such functions as proposed by Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall.

First, religion provides people a sense of control. This was demonstrated in a series of studies conducted between 2008 and 2010, which showed that threatening volunteers’ sense of personal control increased their belief in God. This may be because people believe that God makes the world more predictable and thus less threatening. Much like believing in God, higher intelligence has been shown to grant people more “self-efficacy,” which is the belief in one’s ability to achieve goals. So, if intelligent people have more control, then perhaps they don’t need religion in the same way that others do.

Second, religion provides self-regulation. In a 2009 study, it was shown that religion was associated with better well-being. This was interpreted as an indication that religious people were more disciplined in pursuing goals and deferring small rewards for large ones. Separately, a 2008 meta-analysis noted that intelligent people were less impulsive. Delayed gratification may require better working memory, which intelligent people have. So, just like before, intelligence is acting as a substitute for religion, helping people delay gratification without needing divine interventions.

Third, religion provides self-enhancement. A 1997 meta-analysis compared the intrinsically religious, who privately believe in the supernatural, to the extrinsically religious, where people are merely part of a religious group without believing in God. The intrinsically religious felt better about themselves than the general public. Similarly, intelligent people have been shown to have a sense of higher self-worth. Again, intelligence may be providing something that religion does.

Last, and possibly the most intriguing, is that religion provides attachment. Religious people often claim to have a personal relationship with God. They use God as an “anchor” when faced with the loss of a loved one or a broken relationship. Turns out intelligent people find their “anchor” in people by building relationships. Studies have found that those who score highly on measures of intelligence are more likely to be married and less likely to get divorced. Thus, intelligent people have less need to seek religion as a substitute for companionship.

Give me the caveats

This meta-analysis only targets analytic intelligence, which surely is not the full measure of human intelligence despite the ongoing debate about how to define the rest of it. Also, although the review encompasses all studies conducted from 1928 to 2012, it only does so for studies written in the English language (two foreign language studies were considered only because a translation was available). The authors believe there are similar studies conducted in Japan and Latin America, but they did not have the time or resources to include them.

Zuckerman also warns that, despite there being thousands of participants overall, ranging among all ages, almost all of them belong to Western society. More than 87 percent of the participants were from the US, the UK, and Canada. So after controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants. For Catholicism and Judaism, the correlation may be less negative.

There are some complications to the explanations too. For example, the non-conformist theory of atheism cannot apply to societies where the majority are atheists, such as Scandinavian countries. The possible explanations are also currently just that—possible. They need to be empirically studied.

Finally, not all studies reviewed are of equal quality, and some of them have been criticized by other researchers. But that is exactly why meta-analyses are performed. They help overcome limitations of sample size, poor data, and questionable analyses of individual studies.

As always, the word “correlation” is important. It hasn’t been shown that higher intelligence causes someone to be less religious. So, it wouldn’t be right to call someone a dimwit just because of their religious beliefs. Unless, of course, you are an ancient playwright looking to provoke your audience.

1614 Reader Comments

Maybe the correlation is the other way around. It's not that intelligent people are less religious, but that religion doesn't want intelligent people. At least most modern organised religions discourage critical thinking, the ability to reason... so from the start they are saying to intelligent people "your kind is not welcome here".

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

The ultimate problem with religion is that there is no way to prove the existence of god other than through faith.

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

If intelligence only means "thinking only in terms of what one can scientifically measure", that kind of thinking excludes the supernatural, and as such, has no chance of finding it. And if God exists, then for a creature to reject his Creator, it's the ultimate missed opportunity.

To me, intelligence includes the capability to acknowledge someone's own limitations.

Suppose I tell you I have a fire breathing dragon living in my garage and when you ask to see it I show you an apparently empty garage. You ask where this fire breathing dragon is and I tell you he is invisible. So, seeing dust on the floor and no footprints, you ask why there are no foot prints and I tell you the invisible fire breathing dragon doesn't walk, he floats around. So you wander around my garage, testing the temperature and finding no particular sources of heat say that you can't find any evidence of fire and I tell you this is an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon. You then ask what is the difference between an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon and no dragon at all and I have no answer other than I know the dragon is there. Why should you believe in my invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon?

Atheists, for the most part, don't reject the supernatural without considering it, we reject it because there is no discernible difference between there being a supernatural as claimed by believers and there being no supernatural at all.

It's too late to read the comments, I'll do that tomorrow, but, IQ also correlates with good education and good socioeconomic well being. This might be the reason behind the strong negative correlation in the Scandinavian countries.

Too bad they couldn't include non-English language studies. It would have been very interesting to see those results.

Also the majority of astronomers do not believe in any type of supreme being, and those that do only accept the idea of God according to Spinoza.

Maybe the correlation is the other way around. It's not that intelligent people are less religious, but that religion doesn't want intelligent people. At least most modern organised religions discourage critical thinking, the ability to reason... so from the start they are saying to intelligent people "your kind is not welcome here".

Well, that might be true in many places, but in the places where money is not their true goal this is certainly not the case.

I am a christian and I find it really tiresome talking to simpletons. I WANT to be challenged intellectually.

I have a tested IQ of 138. I am a skilled and respected technical professional. I'm also a Christian.

It seems I am a data point outside the curve?

I have decided to accept *by faith* that God exists without empirical evidence, instead by personal choice. I understand that for some that is a de facto 'unintelligent' position, but I do not demand this of others, everyone must come to their own.

I do though refuse to park my brain at the altar. This does not endear me to many of my peers, who I must admit are too comfortable to believe what they are told without questioning. To me it is evident for instance that:

- The earth is ~ 14 billion years old- Mountains and canyons were not created by a world wide flood. - Evolution is evidenced by the physical record

... and it drives me to distraction that any number of junk 'theories' can be concocted to pacify lazy minds. Faith by definition is belief without evidence, so why try to manufacture it to ease your conscience? If your faith is important enough to you own it for what it is, don't make excuses.

We create god in our own image. I suspect that the problem for many people is that this image seems 500 or 2000 years out of date. The dominant religion in the West is a religion for illiterate slaves and we aren't that anymore. This is especially true for those of that are not on the bottom rung of society.

Perhaps it's time for a religion that's not so blatantly anti-intellectual, that values something like literacy.

Ironically enough, there's a more ancient religion that fits the bill.

The explanation that analytical skills greatly reduce the need for religion is a good one, but not the whole story. Examining the structure and function of religion is also relevant. Where religion is used as a tool for bigotry, for warfare, for sexual repression, etc., its validity immediately becomes questionable. Add to this the fact that personal religious beliefs are largely determined by local culture (few Christians exist in Buddhist countries, etc.), the fact that many religions (not to mention their schisms!) flatly contradict one another (you're doomed if you don't do this! no, you're doomed if you don't do that! no, you're both wrong! etc. ad infinitum), and similar concerns, and in the end religion just doesn't effectively present itself as having any significant chance of being anything other than a series of competing myths developed to socially control large populations at a minimal cost. But the inability to disprove religion operates on the other side, so the end result is an agnosticism which as a practical matter produces basically the same behavior as atheism.

You also have a hard time explaining how all the natural cosmos (i.e. all the scientifically observable world) came to existence. Where did all the matter and energy for a supposed Big Bang come from? The claim that the natural came from the supernatural explains that.

Thanks for the laugh, New Poster...

So if everything "natural came from the supernatural", then where did the supernatural come from?

You've touched on my pet peeve about Creationism: The Creator has ALWAYS existed, and just recently [relatively speaking] decided to produce everything in the known universe.

Writing a retort that a child could come up with isn't very intelligent either. I don't really care what anyone else's beliefs are (that's a personal choice), but I can't stand it when people think their beliefs make them more intelligent (or otherwise superior) than someone else with different beliefs.

These studies don't tell us anything about any individuals level of intelligence, so if you're using them as affirmation that you're more intelligent than someone of a different belief, you're using the studies wrong. Low and high intelligence individuals exist in both camps.

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

If intelligence only means "people who think only in terms of what they can scientifically measure", that kind of thinking excludes the supernatural, and as such, has no chance of finding it. And if God exists, then for a creature to reject his Creator, it's the ultimate missed opportunity.

To me, intelligence includes the capability to acknowledge someone's own limitations.

The complete absence of evidence is pretty good as evidence of absence. I consider myself an atheist, and while I accept that I could be wrong, and there's a god who just doesn't feel like showing himself, I don't have any reason to think that's the case. An atheist doesn't discard the supernatural a priori, but accepts that since there wasn't a monster under the bed the last hundred times, odds are pretty good one still won't be there this time.

"The complete absence of evidence is pretty good as evidence of absence."

Scientists would probably argue with that. If they have no way to prove or explain something, that doesn't mean that thing doesn't exist.

But even aside from that, if you believe *anything* from 2000 years ago, you would have to believe the story of Jesus because it's better supported by documents and evidence than many other things from that age.

There's good historical evidence that Jesus existed. And evidence that he claimed to be the messiah. There's also good historical evidence that a number of other people claimed to be the messiah around the same period. As for historical evidence whether any of these claims were true or false, that is another matter entirely.

Religon = dogma = not question = lack of intelligence. It's in the very definition.

Did you actually read the article? Not all religions are dogmatic. I also get the impression that your use of intelligence differs from that specified in the article.

Now, without a doubt, i'm the black sheep in my family. I outright reject the bible as a book of fact (eg. the talking donkey is one of many, many examples). However, to defend my family, they don't take the book as gospel - nor do they believe everything they hear. Their views are: the general message is good and that a community committed to good is a positive thing. In just about every sense of the word, their definition contradicts your statement.

But, I do belong to a religious organisation - the Scouts. When my children have to say anything about "God", I just tell them to think "nature" (as in "mother nature") ... but technically, according to the article, i'd be classified as a religious person - even though i'm up there with Dawkins with my beliefs

But even aside from that, if you believe ANYTHING from 2000 years ago, you would have to believe the story of Jesus because it's better supported by documents and evidence than many other things from that age.

That is farcical at best. There is no contemporary primary source that mentioned Jesus. All such sources are from much later. Most come from the second century.

Compare this to other historical figures like the Roman Emperors and regional kings. All have good primary sources.

The bible itself is not a primary source, but the letters that the new testament are composed of could be. To bad we either do not have access to the originals or the ones we do are all dated from much later then Jesus's time.

Quote:

You also have a hard time explaining how all the natural cosmos (i.e. all the scientifically observable world) came to existence. Where did all the matter and energy for a supposed Big Bang come from? The claim that the natural came from the supernatural explains that.

The universe did not come from nothing. Saying that it did is a simplification used to illustrate how strangely small a quantum singularity is. As we explore more, and develop better theory's and test them we know more and more about how the universe came to be.

What your argument boils down to is one of God in the Gaps. i.e. we do know have a full explanations of something right now, so it must have been God. As more is explained move the goal posts...

Quote:

"since there wasn't a monster under the bed the last hundred times, odds are pretty good one still won't be there this time."

Here let me go back to what was written in the section you quoted - people are sometimes looking for God in all the wrong places or ways. You could be looking for a monster under your bed, while what you actually need is a still small voice in your heart.

More wishy washy God of the Gaps nonsense. God has been pushed out of every place else, so he must dwell in our hearts.

What we are looking for is evidence that is repeatable, testable, measurable, and disprovable.

Quote:

Jesus said that God wants to dwell in your heart. Have you looked there? Many suppress the desire for eternal life, and the company of the Creator, which God planted there. But of course God doesn't force you to listen.

Finally, using your bed and monster example above: even if you only had 1/300 chance of an exceptionally high reward, such as finding eternal life, would you be able to give up altogether and still say "I've tried everything in my power"?

Maybe, they just influence a different type of intelligence. I'm very analytical ... but I'm also smart enough to recognise it's not the only form of intelligence. They put that portion of their mind at rest - and can focus on other things???

One other interesting (off-topic) fact I read last night is that about 155,000 scientific papers have been accepted that support evolution, about 18 have been accepted that support creationism.. It had nothing to do with your post, but it was the answer I was originally looking for

For one, the study, according to the story, mostly applies to American Protestants.

Of all denominations of Christianity, american protestantism is the stupidest, most backwards and less sophisticated. So no surprises for the negative correlation with IQ here.

Second, ours is an era were society is more or less atheist in the higher echelons and modus of operation. It's not an era like, say, the 18th century, were people in all walks of life were most likely to believe. Religion is something relegated to backwaters, like the Bible Belt.

So no surprise again that those not believing were found to be more intelligent than those that do. Universities and such foster atheism for the last century or so. Before that, not so much.

Whan I mean is that the results do not exactly show the correlation between religion and intelligence PER SE, but the correlation between religion and intelligence in a society were religion has declined from the top position.

The results would be quite different in pre-modern societies, were even the brightest minds were also naturally believers, because that was the fashion/tendency/normal thing expected of them.

Intelligent people might not believe in magic or religion but they sure aren't going to discount it out of hand.

You are twisting Sir Arthur C. Clarke's third law. It was meant as a rejection of magic and such.

Intelligent people reject magic out of hand , because not only is their no mechanism in the universe for it to work. But, there is no evidence that it has ever worked. We reject it because it has been looked into many times and always found wanting. It is now in the category of items that need solid proof put forth from its proponents before we will even consider looking into it again.

Although I strongly agree with this and see it all the time. Budhism is an exception. But I guess by their definitions its not a religion (if you follow what he taught not certain counties interpretations)

I started a meetup group once for atheists and skeptics in my town, and I was surprised at the high percentage of people who were die-hard libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, ideologies that are totally unworkable in our society and therefore pointless. It sort of made me feel like those ideologies were their substitutes for religion. Maybe we're all just irrational beings by nature?

I don't believe in god(s) or pure, unfettered capitalism, but I have had other, totally irrational beliefs in the past, such as, "Maybe if I get back together with this person who used to make my life miserable, everything will work out great this time!"